D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (20 page)

The 8th had a good mix of people, thoroughly American. As Van Fleet noted, it had historically been a Southern regiment, made up of country boys from Florida, Alabama, and Georgia. He called them his "squirrel shooters." They could find their way through the woods at night without being afraid and knew how to shoot a rifle. When the draftees began coming in, many of them were from New York and other Eastern cities. They knew nothing about weapons or woods, but they had skills the Southern boys lacked, such as motors and communications. "The marriage of North and South was a happy one," Van Fleet commented.

In training the 8th for an assault, Van Fleet emphasized coordination and firepower. If two men were attacking a pillbox, one would put continuous fire on the embrasure while the other crept up on it from the other side. When the advancing man drew fire, he went to the ground and began firing back while his partner crept closer to the objective. Eventually one crept close enough to toss a grenade into the pillbox. "This sort of attack requires bravery, confidence in your partner, and patience," Van Fleet observed. "We enacted this scenario countless hundreds of times from 1941 through 1943, often with live ammunition."
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Two years was a long time to be training. Men got impatient. One of Van Fleet's most aggressive lieutenants, George L. Mabry, wanted to get into the real war. He applied for a transfer to the Army Air Force. Van Fleet called him in for a chat. Knowing his commander would be upset, Mabry was shaking "like a leaf when he reported.

"You are applying for the Air Force?" Van Fleet asked.

"Yes, sir."

"You ever been up in an airplane?"

"No, sir."

"Well, you better get over and withdraw that application. You might get sick in an airplane."

"Yes, sir."

Mabry stayed with Van Fleet. He became one of the best officers in the 4th Division.*

The 29th Division sailed for England in September 1942 aboard the
Queen Mary,
converted from luxury liner to troop transport. The
Queen Mary
sailed alone, depending on her speed to avoid submarines. At 500 miles out from the Continent, and thus within range of the Luftwaffe, an escort of British warships appeared. A cruiser, HMS
Curacao,
cut across the bow of the 83,000-ton
Queen Mary.
The
Queen
knifed into the 4,290-ton cruiser and cut her in half, killing 332 members of her crew. It was not an auspicious beginning to the great Allied invasion.

The division took over Tidworth Barracks, near Salisbury. These were the best barracks in England but woefully short of what GIs had become accustomed to in the training camps in the States. For men who had trained in the American South, the English weather was miserable. Pvt. John R. Slaughter of Company D, 116th Regiment, recalled, "Morale was not good during those first few months in the British Isles. Homesickness, dreary weather, long weeks of training without pause caused many of us to grumble."
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It didn't help that the 29th necessarily became an experimental outfit. It was the only large American combat unit in the United Kingdom. It had no specific mission for the first year it was there. Instead, it carried out training exercises that were, in effect,

* Mabry stayed in the infantry. He was awarded the Medal of Honor and retired a major general.

experiments in the development of doctrine, procedures, and techniques in amphibious assaults. In short, the men saw themselves as guinea pigs.

Making things worse, the food was awful. Britain had been at war for more than two years; there were no fresh eggs, little fresh meat, too many brussels sprouts. Lt. Robert Walker of Headquarters Company, 116th Regiment, remembered that on field problems "we were issued sack lunches. These consisted of two sandwiches made of dry brown bread; one had a glob of jelly in the middle, the other a slice of pork luncheon meat. We called them Spam and jam lunches."
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Any American tourist who has ever purchased one of those sandwiches at a London shop knows just how bad they are.

Weekend passes to Salisbury or, even better, to London were hard to come by and highly prized. As the Yanks were paid more than double what the Tommies received, and had much better-looking uniforms, they attracted the girls. This caused considerable resentment. There was also friction between black GIs, mainly in the Services of Supply (SOS), and the white soldiers. When they mixed in a pub there was almost sure to be a fight, too often culminating in a shooting. The Army took to segregating the pubs—one night for blacks, another for whites. Overall, however, considering that by D-Day there were some 2 million Yanks on an island only slightly larger than the state of Colorado, the American "occupation" of Britain was carried out with remarkable success. It helped beyond measure that everyone had the same ultimate objective.

It helped, too, that the Americans tightened their standard of discipline. Col. Charles Canham commanded the 116th Regiment. Canham was a West Pointer, class of 1926. Pvt. Felix Bran-ham characterized him as "a fiery old guy who spit fire and brimstone." The colonel "was so tough that we used to call ourselves 'Colonel Canham's Concentration Camp.' " If a man was a few minutes late from a pass, he was fined $30 and confined to camp for thirty days. One day Branham overheard a conversation between Canham and the CO of the 29th Division, Maj. Gen. Charles Gerhardt. Gerhardt told Canham, "You're too hard on the men."

"Goddamn it, Charles," Canham shot back, "this is my regiment and I am the one commanding it."

"You know," Gerhardt replied, "the men don't mind that

$30 but they hate that thirty days." Canham eased up, but only a bit. "I tell you, we trained," Branham declared. "We started out on various types of landing craft. We got on LSTs, LCVPs, we got on LCIs, on LCMs, we landed from British ships, we landed from American ships. You name it, our training was there. We threw various types of hand grenades. We learned to use enemy weapons."
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Gerhardt was a West Pointer, an old cavalryman and polo player, flamboyant in his dress, gung ho in his attitude. He did everything by the book and insisted that his men dress just right, always appear clean-shaven, even keep their jeeps spotless. He also wanted enthusiasm; one way he got it was to have the men chant their battle cry as they marched over the dunes, "Twenty-nine, let's go!" When an old-timer from the 1st Division, a combat veteran of North Africa and Sicily, heard that he yelled back, "Go ahead, twenty-nine, we'll be right behind you!"
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The 29th marched all over southwestern England. The men spent nights in the field, sleeping in foxholes. They learned the basic lesson infantrymen must learn, to love the ground, how to use it to their advantage, how it dictates a plan of battle, above all how to live in it for days at a time without impairment of physical efficiency. They were taught to see folds in the terrain that no civilian would notice. They attacked towns, hills, woods. They dug countless foxholes. They had fire problems, attacking with artillery, mortars, machine guns, crashing into their objectives. They concentrated single-mindedly on offensive tactics.

A member of the 29th Division recalled "loading and unloading landing craft, exiting, peeling off, quickly moving forward, crawling under barbed wire with live machine-gun fire just inches overhead and live explosions, strategically placed, detonated all around. We were schooled in the use of explosives: satchel charges and bangalore torpedoes were excellent for blowing holes in barbed wire and neutralizing fortified bunkers. Bayonets were used to probe for hidden mines. Poison-gas drills, first aid, airplane and tank identification, use and detection of booby traps and more gave us the confidence that we were ready. I believe our division was as competent to fight as any green outfit in history."
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They spent countless hours on the firing range. Sgt. Weldon Kratzer, Company C, 116th, remembered the day Eisenhower, accompanied by Montgomery and other big shots, came by to

watch. After a bit, Eisenhower called to Kratzer. "Sergeant, I was observing your firing," he said, "and I must compliment you." He went on, "I used to be a good shot, do you mind if" I use your rifle?"

"It would be an honor, sir."

Eisenhower took the prone position, adjusted the sling, aimed, tried to pull the trigger, and nothing happened.

"Sir, your rifle is on safety," Kratzer said.

"I don't blame you for taking precautions," Eisenhower replied, blushing and taking off the safety. He blasted away at a target 600 meters off. "He wasn't bad," Kratzer reported. "Most of his shots were four or five o'clock." When Eisenhower had a total miss and Maggie's drawers went up, he called out "And the same to you, old girl."

After Eisenhower had fired a full clip, Kratzer offered to reload for him. Eisenhower said no, thanks, "You fellows need the practice more than I do." As he was leaving, Eisenhower told Kratzer, "Sergeant, I'm impressed with your marksmanship, you sure know your Kentucky windage."

"General Eisenhower," Kratzer replied, "I'm from Virginia. I use Virginia windage."

"I'll be damned," said the general. "I think we'd all be better off if we used Virginia windage."
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Eisenhower spent a great deal of his time in the field, inspecting, watching training exercises. He wanted to see as many men as possible and let them see him. He managed to talk to hundreds personally. In the four months from February 1 to June 1, he visited twenty-six divisions, twenty-four airfields, five ships of war, and countless depots, shops, hospitals, and other installations.

To the graduating class at Sandhurst, in the spring of 1944, Eisenhower delivered an impromptu address in which he spoke of the great issues involved. He made each graduate aware that his own chances for a happy, decent life were directly tied up in the success of Overlord. He reminded them of the great traditions of Sandhurst. He told the newly commissioned officers that they must be like fathers to their men, even when the men were twice their age, that they must keep the men out of trouble and stand up for them when they committed a transgression. Their companies must be like a big family and they must be the head of the family, ensuring that the unit was cohesive, tough, well trained, well equipped, ready to go. The response of the Sandhurst graduates,

according to Thor Smith, a public-relations officer at SHAEF, was "electric. They just loved him."
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Beyond weapons training, physical conditioning, and getting familiar with the various landing craft, the men went through assault exercises. Everything possible was done to make them realistic, from climbing down the rope nets into the Higgins boats in a high sea to the buildings and terrain on the shore. Sgt. Tom Plumb of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, 3rd Canadian Division, discovered when he hit the shore on D-Day near Bernieres-sur-Mer (Juno Beach) that "it was identical to the beach we had been training on in Inverness, Scotland, right down to the exact locations of pillboxes."
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Lt. Col. Paul Thompson commanded the U.S. Assault Training Center at Woolacombe. He established training areas at suitable beaches, of which the most extensive was Slapton Sands in Devonshire on the south coast. Nearly 3,000 residents were moved out of their homes in the villages and farms in the area. At Slapton Sands the geography was a nigh replica of the Cotentin coastline. The beach of coarse gravel led inland to shallow lagoons.

Thompson, a 1929 graduate of West Point, was an outstanding engineer, an imaginative creator of realistic training exercises, and dedicated to his job, which was to develop doctrines and techniques to assault a heavily defended shore. His initial task was to train demonstration troops and put them through practice exercises for various high-ranking observers. Once his superiors approved his ideas, he became responsible for training all assault troops for the invasion.
^ll

In August 1943, Thompson went to work. At Slapton Sands and eight other locations he oversaw the erection of a hedgehog area for battalion training, an assault range for company training, a beach range for firing artillery and mortars against a hostile shore from the landing craft, an artillery range, a wire-cutting range for training in the use of bangalore torpedoes and other devices for breaching wire, an infantry demolition range for training in using satchel charges against pillboxes and the breaching of underwater and land obstacles, an obstacle-course area, and a multiple-purpose range for practice in the use of flamethrowers, rockets, and grenades. Thompson also set up a training facility for engineers.

After many experiments, Thompson and his people concluded that the first waves, which would go ashore in Higgins boats

with a capacity of thirty men to a boat, should be broken down into rifle-assault platoons consisting of a five-man rifle team, a four-man bangalore and wire-cutting team, a four-man rocket-launcher team, a two-man flamethrower team, a four-man BAR team, a four-man 60mm mortar team, a five-man demolition team, and two officers.

Thompson broke the training down into four phases. First, individual training on the obstacle course. Second, team training for the wire cutters and demolition men. Third, company exercises. Fourth, battalion exercises. Umpires were present to judge, criticize, and suggest. The training was hard and realistic. Live ammunition was often used and accidents happened. In mid-December a short artillery round killed four men and injured six; a couple of days later three landing craft capsized and fourteen men drowned.